


Midnight Oil

by Geonn



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: 1880s, F/M, In Public, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Unrequited Love, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-03
Updated: 2013-05-03
Packaged: 2017-12-10 08:05:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geonn/pseuds/Geonn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time was accidental. Every time after that was shameful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight Oil

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dbalthasar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dbalthasar/gifts).



James envied the man he'd once been. Where he and the others had gained extraordinary gifts after injecting Helen's concoction, often it seemed like they had exchanged more mundane abilities that they'd always taken for granted. James had once been able to stop thinking and go to sleep, a restful slumber that left him ready for the following morning's studies. Now he often lay in bed for hours, wasting the dark hours with the routine he couldn't quite work out anymore. He'd taken to wandering through the empty halls, astounded at how abandoned the university felt in the first hours of a new day.

On one of his walks he decided to see if the others suffered the same inability to sleep as he. John's room was near his, so he trekked through the stone maze until he found the door. He paused to listen for sounds from within, unwilling to disturb his friend if he had indeed found sleep. What he heard instead was a distinctly feminine gasp followed by a throaty chuckle. Mischievous, sultry, the sound was the unmistakable product of Helen Magnus' vocal chords. He'd have recognized it anywhere, the fact it originated from Druitt's room making it all but certain. 

It came as no surprise that Helen was unwilling to wait for marriage before she gave herself to her fiancé. She was a woman ahead of her time. Standing on ceremony held very little interest to her. He knew that she and John had shared carnal relations before he even produced the ring. They were both adults. And Helen was hardly a fallen woman. In James' mind, the scandal was not with intercourse before marriage, it was simply with being caught at it.

All the more reason he knew he should turn around and walk away. Instead he paused with his head inclined toward the door. His eyes were closed as he tried to imagine the scene from the facts he had available. He could picture John's room perfectly; the single bed across from the door within arm's reach of the writing desk under the window. A wardrobe to the right and a chair under a lamp for reading. Helen would likely have her back to the door. He envisioned the long lines of her back: spine, scapula, the bell curve of her hips. The pale blonde curls resting on her shoulders, moving slightly with the sway of her body. John's hands on her hips to guide her, though the rhythm was all of Helen's origin. He imagined the curve of her buttocks, the cleft between them, John's thick shaft disappearing into the shadow between her thighs when she sank onto him... then reappearing when she rose. He then saw it wet with her juices as Helen issued another breathless laugh.

The laugh was broken by a surprised gasp. "Oh, darling," Helen said. "Yes... there."

James backed away from the door so quickly that the flame of his candle danced on the wick, swaying forward and then twisting around the wick to right itself. He ran his hand over his face, looked to either side to see if he'd been discovered, and then moved away from the room at a brisk pace. He felt the pants he slept in awkwardly tented in front of him, his erection swaying under the lightweight material as he hurried to put distance between him and his shameful voyeurism.

He didn't stop until he was outside, finding a tree wide enough to block the sight of him from the dormitory windows. He withdrew his cock from his trousers and stroked without lubrication, grunting at the roughness of his palms, furrowing his brow as he pictured the scene again in his mind. With the barrier of the door gone he could easily place himself in the room with his friends. He could almost hear John's startled gasp, see Helen's eyes framed by her wild curls as she looked over her shoulder and saw him. 

Helen would motion for him to join them, and he would lower his pants as he approached the bed. He would step out of the loose material as he climbed onto the mattress, crawling between John's legs and pressing against Helen. He looked down at the head of his cock, smearing pre-come over it and down the shaft. She would raise her hand to his cheek, stroking it as he pressed against her available entrance, easing past the resistance until Helen inhaled sharply at his penetration. He would kiss her neck. His hands would meet John's over her breasts, and he would taste her skin and sweat as they filled her together.

The realities of the position made themselves known to him, and he was forced to consider how it would feel to have his scrotum resting against John's. Would they be able to feel the other's movement? Should he slip from Helen's clutches would his prick rub lewdly against John's? Something in his chest trembled at the possibility, but it wasn't fright or disgust. He knew that should they ever find themselves in such a position they would take full advantage of the debauchery.

He climaxed at the thought, thrusting his hips forward and sending a white arc of come into the green grass. When he stopped throbbing and he was certain there was no more to be spent, he tucked himself into his pajamas once more. He realized he'd been holding the candle in his free hand the entire time, the wax so deeply pooled in the gold cupola that it threatened to spill and sting his fingers. Worse still, it had provided a beacon to anyone who might have looked in the right direction to see him wanking himself.

He blew out the candle to shroud his furtive retreat back to his room.

During the day he ignored what he'd learned in his nocturnal promenade, working alongside Helen and John both without betraying his knowledge. He noticed small things between them however... a lingering touch of hand on hand, John looking up to find Helen staring at him and both smiling, the odd tenderness in how Helen lowered herself into a seat. He wondered what they had done to cause such sensitivity well into the following day, but stopped his thoughts lest they lead him down a dangerous road.

That night he stood at his window as sleep eluded him once more. His minds drifted from the problems they had spent the day working to untangle and drifted back to Helen. The way she pressed her lips together as her rear end made contact with the seat, the sigh of relief when she relaxed without pain. He wet his lips and wondered if John had assumed the position James had taken in his fantasy. Helen was certainly forward-thinking, but sodomy... Just thinking the word gave him a chill on the back of the neck, and he reached up to stroke the hairs there. To imagine Helen with her cheek on the bedclothes, her hindquarters in the air as John took her like a wild animal...

As if bent through a prism the image shifted, and suddenly it wasn't Helen in the receiving position underneath John, and it wasn't her buttocks that he pressed his middle finger between. James rested his hands on the sill to prevent them from roaming. Would he accept that fantasy in his mind? Perhaps with the addition of Helen, lying on one hip beside him on the bed, knee bent to lift her leg so that her modesty was protected, her hand cupping her mound to both obscure it and pleasure herself as she watched the men. Propped up by pillows, he could all but see her pale pink nipples and the sweat that glistened on the curves in the moonlight.

He wondered if they were together tonight. Surely they didn't come together - as it were - every evening. There was still a tremor of discovery between them, a glee at their illicit activities that would fade if it had become commonplace. He envied John's ability to step into a private space, glimpse the reality, and then vanish without consequence. James could only rely on his vast imagination to fill the blanks. 

So he envisioned Helen's room, the vanity above her dresser where she combed the curls from her hair. Long and golden, it framed her face. When the fantasy began she wore a nightgown, but it soon faded from existence so that her hair draped bare breasts. He trailed his eyes down her body, her flat stomach and the tuft of pale hair that kept her secrets hidden even from his omniscient gaze. He'd heard of some women going bare, but he didn't want to imagine Helen in that state. He wanted to see the dew of her desire on the hair, wanted to run his fingers through it and feel how wet he had made her.

One hand strayed from the sill and closed around the bulge in his pajamas. The soft material brushed against sensitive skin, and he imagined it was Helen's hair. The pressure from his fingers was actually her labia, folding around him, drawing him inside. He grunted as he came, staining his clothes but unable to stop himself long enough to shed them. When the orgasm passed he stripped them off and returned to bed in just a long shirt, climbing under the blankets and laying his hands flat on the bed on either side of him.

A few nights later when he took his walk outside, he told himself it was an innocent choice. Even when he stopped within sight of John's window the lie stood strong in his mind. One hand in his pocket, the index finger of the other curled around the hoop of the candlestick holder, he watched the shadows playing on the ceiling and walls of John's room. He wondered how far Helen's allowances went. Did she take John into her mouth? Had she heard of women who engaged in mammary intercourse, allowing her partner to thrust between her breasts? Helen was certainly endowed enough for--

He knew for a fact that John had performed cunnilingus on her. Now that he knew they were sexually active, previously innocent behavior accrued a new weight. A moment when they discussed foreign cuisine, and John had mentioned that he'd recently acquired a taste for something so unique and rare that he dared not give it a name. Helen had cut him off with a sharp look, but her pinkened cheeks had been upturned in a smile. 

Was Helen even now seated on the edge of John's bed, skirts raised to expose her thighs, John's dark hair visible between her spread thighs...

"Damn it," he cursed under his breath. He moved closer to the tree and freed his cock once more. He rested his head against the hard bark of the tree, feeling it bite and cut into his skin as he licked his palm and gripped his shaft. He stroked quickly, focusing on the finish rather than pleasure. He could hear Helen's voice in his head as clearly as if she was standing behind him: _Oh, yes... there. There, John, yes. Don't stop._ He came, biting his tongue to keep from voicing his orgasm, and he knocked his head gently against the tree so as not to leave a permanent mark. 

What he was doing was shameful, utterly wrong. It was an invasion of their privacy and a violation of their trust. It was the sort of horrid and debauched thing Nikola might do, but it was above him. He tucked his cock into his pants, once again ashamed at the feel of the cold night air on the sensitive head. He shuddered and hurried down the path, his candle lighting the way. He glanced up at John's window once more and slowed his steps.

Helen was backlit by the candlelight, a blanket tucked under her arms. Her hair was mussed, and even from a distance he could see a flush in her cheeks. A flush from what she and John had been doing or something... else? Had she seen him? Had she been watching? He parted his lips to issue an apology, even a silent one, but Helen held up one hand. To stop him? To bid him farewell? She curled the last two fingers and her thumb inward, kissed the tip of her middle finger, and ran her palm down the front of the sheet. 

James' heart quickened as the cotton pulled taut across her breasts. Her shoulders hunched and her lips parted. He watched the muscles of her arm move and knew what she was doing. She kept her eyes open as she touched herself, the flush rising in her chest, breathing heavily. On each deep inhale, the sheet threatened to move lower on her breasts, threatened to expose her nipples, and James grew stiff again at the possibility.

She lifted her chin to expose her throat, and James felt his ears burn as he watched Helen, Helen Magnus, sweet and untouchable Helen Magnus, climax by her own hand. Slowly the life came back to her body. She lowered her chin and opened her eyes, and James returned her stare without embarrassment. She brought her hand up and kissed her first two fingers. James smiled and inclined his head before turning to walk away.

When he looked back, the window was empty save for candlelight.


End file.
